Hans-Jürgen Raabe, "990 Faces"The large photographic image of our timeWe are delighted to announce this long-term photographic project, the completion of which will span an entire decade. The photographer Hans-Jürgen Raabe, focus’ on the human face, searching archetypal places and recording time in a way as to bring to our attention that special and often overlooked air of normality. The project will be built in a series of 30 photographs, Hans-Jürgen Raabes mission is to pick up where our attention often falters and fails us. Where we become blind to the realities of other people as we move through life with our eyes firmly shut. Training his lens on people, without pretence and with the simple intent to reveal and capture what is, his photographs are masterful still lifes – to borrow from the expression used by the German media scientist Norbert Bolz. Their power not only lies in their ability to penetrate our rampant apathy, but also in the fact that their simplistic beauty effectively cuts through our perceived need for visual business and action.When choosing the stages for his photographic studies, Raabe purposely selects places that are both formal and special in character. Whether Myanmar, Lourdes or the October festival, Marrakech or Fifth Avenue – vanishing points of Raabes work are formed by carefully chosen places that represent exceptions to the norm, that have about them that special air of normality or, vice verse, mundane air of being special. The Project is a photographic record of thirty-three visits to these places that aims to capture their magic without making these places themselves an object of contemplation – but simply designating them the ‘stage` on which human live is played out, in all its mundaneness, uniqueness, normality and individuality.Thirty-three places. Thirty photographs of people per place. Making a total of “990 Faces” – or ‚the Project – and the adventure of what it means to be human.

Hans-Jürgen Raabe, born in 1952, is a German expat who has been living and working – as a journalist, publisher and manager - abroad for many years. A student of the famous theatre photographer Haendler-Krah, Kiel, Raabe, dedicated himself to the 990 Faces Project after a nearly 30-year break from photography and as a continuation of his previous book publications and exhibitions (e.g. Berlin Graffiti, 1982). Raabes passion and his photography is about ‘reality‘ – capturing life as it is, without the use of props, artificial lighting or photoshopping. His photographs are images of split second experience captured on the spur of the moment, without any artifice, posing, make up – they are direct, unadorned snapshots of real people and real life – and at the same time brim with poetry.